Tuesday, 7 June 2011

Six-Gun Samurai #3

GUNDOWN AT GOLDEN GATE

as by Patrick Lee

Pinnacle, April 1981

An American, raised since childhood in the land of the Shogun and trained as a warrior knight in Japan, Tanaka Tom Fletcher is bound by the Samurai code of the Bushido to a bloody vendetta against the Yankee marauders who slaughtered his family in Georgia. He must carry out his mission to its ultimate conclusion – the destruction of his enemies or himself.

Now Tanaka Tom Fletcher’s quest for vengeance has led him to San Francisco, where an agent of his archenemy, Colonel Hollister, is running for mayor. The Six-Gun Samurai intends to terminate his campaign before it gets to the ballot box….

But Fletcher doesn’t foresee the violent power struggle between the forces of the corrupt politicians and the ruthless blue dragon tong society. It’s a Samurai showdown as Fletcher finds himself in the middle of two warring factions – and both sides want him dead.

This is a very fast moving book that reads like a spaghetti western, only that the hero is a white man trained as a Samurai who lives by their ideals. His quest for vengeance continues through all nine books in the series. For some reason the final three books had a series title change to Six-Gun Warrior. Perhaps someone out there knows why this happened?

Patrick Lee is a pseudonym shared by three different authors, Mark Roberts, Patrick Andrews, and William Fieldhouse, this entry in the series was written by the latter.

The book is almost non-stop action as Tom Fletcher finds himself trying to stop an election as well as taking on some Chinese tongs involved in an opium war. This all allows for plenty of bloodletting, be it from bullets punching through flesh or swords slicing through limbs and decapitating various people. So, yes, this series does fall into the category of very violent books that describe their action in savage, gory, detail.

The story held my attention well and kept me eagerly turning the pages, as much to see how high the death toll would be as to how Fletcher would best the massive odds stacked against him.

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For years and years I've been a reader - and collector - of western fiction, mainly from series. Sometime ago I was persuaded to write reviews and these are now appearing here. Along with these reviews you'll also find interviews with authors and cover artists.